This evening she was even weaker than usual, though she did not acknowledge it, but sitting at the supper table her hands trembled so badly that the cups and saucers rattled a little as she served the tea. Miriam, whose life had been one constant struggle, was struggling still. No wonder the widow was proud of her son, her only son. Her gray eyes, beautiful as in her youth, would wander to him again and again, and rest upon his face with a strange, yearning expression, but whenever he turned to her she would drop them quickly and move a little nervously in her chair, striving to conceal, as she had done so many years ago, the burden of grief that lay at her heart.
It was a pleasant party to look at, for Luke Denin too was there, and the young people carefully avoided any allusion to the separation before them. Tom, always gay and happy, was more than handsome in his sailor’s dress, with the bronze of the tropical sun upon his face. And Luke, if he was not so tall by half a head, and if his hair, instead of being black and crisp with waves, was light and straight, had at least as honest and frank a pair of deep blue eyes as Hannah cared to see—not that Hannah looked at them, for she looked only at her plate, and once in a while anxiously at her mother. Young Tom was evidently determined that this last meal at home should not be a sorrowful one, as he kept up the conversation in his liveliest mood. He told wonderful tales in such an absurd vein of exaggeration, that sometimes it even called up a smile on the widow’s face; and when the meal was over he picked her up playfully in his strong arms and carried her out upon the porch. There together they all watched the moonlight gradually show itself out of the dissolving day, in long paths across the water. Then the hour came to say good-bye.
It was a desperate battle for Miriam, as she clung to her son in that parting moment. Then it was, for the first time, that something in her face went to the man’s inmost heart like a chill. She was old and frail, and his absence would be long, perhaps he might never look upon her again. In his wild fascination for the sea, was he not sacrificing her? The anguish of the thought overcame him. Had it been possible then he would have given up this voyage and staid at home, but it was too late now, and when he had turned for a moment, and with a strong effort fought his grief under control, he said gently,—
“No, no! Do not be so distressed, mother! It is all for the best; and when I come back this time, mother, I will never leave you any more.”
But Miriam, thinking of that other parting so long ago, remembered that Jacob, too, had said when he came back he would never leave her any more, and with a half suppressed cry she clasped her hands tighter about his neck.
“O, my son, you will come back! Only promise me you will come back, and I can wait patiently and long!”
There was a wild energy in her voice that frightened him, as she went on hurriedly with an accent he had never heard till then,—
“Once before, with this same dread at my heart, I parted two-and-twenty years ago, but I let him go without saying a word. I waited patiently. I even sang and tried to be happy. As the time went by I laughed as I thought how pleased he would be when he saw how his children had grown. I tied about your waist a sash of his favorite color, that he had brought me from the distant Indies, and I kept every thing in readiness for—what? They came and told me that he had gone down at sea—No, no; do not interrupt me. I let him go without saying a word. I must speak this time!”
She paused for a moment as if waiting until her excitement had calmed, and with her trembling hand put back the hair from his forehead, then went on unsteadily in a tone but little louder than a whisper,—
“You have the same dreamy far-off look in your eyes. I know you must go my child, I know you can not resist—but when your father left he said it would be only for a little while, and I—I have waited two-and-twenty years.”